The franchise leader believes that, after this game, many other titles will also transition from Xbox Series to PlayStation 5.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was released yesterday for the PlayStation 5, as announced in September. Following Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empires, and Gears of War: Reloaded, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is the latest Xbox title to make its way to the rival console, a trend that will continue with Halo: Campaign Evolved next year. In an interview with XDA Developers, Jörg Neumann, the head of the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise, revealed that the game may have started it all. He first raised the idea within the company about two and a half years ago but was initially rejected. However, Microsoft eventually changed its mind and, in Neumann’s words, launched an avalanche of Xbox game ports for the PlayStation 5.

“It was my idea, actually. With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, we released the game on PC in August 2020. One year later, we released it on Xbox and found millions of new fans who had never experienced the flight simulator because they’re not PC gamers. Many of them thought it was great, and many of them stayed. In 2020, the download was already 120 GB. By 2023, the install size had grown to 300 GB. With our content roadmap and all the new features we were adding, we knew we would exceed a terabyte. I said, ‘We need to do something,’ so we decided to create Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 with the concept of a thin client. Now, our client is 8 GB. Instead of putting everything on your hard drive and making the download huge, we put everything in the cloud.”

That made it possible to go to other platforms. Two and a half years ago, he proposed going to PlayStation. It was probably a bit ahead of its time because he was initially told no. Then, someone at Sony who had grown up with flight simulators thought it would be a great addition to their portfolio. They proactively reached out to their president, who then told him, “Remember when we talked about the PlayStation thing a year ago? Sony is also interested.” “I think that really kicked off an avalanche of Xbox titles coming to PlayStation,” said Neumann.

He also added that the studio worked hard to optimize the game for the PlayStation 5 console and the DualSense controller. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 indeed supports adaptive triggers that respond to different speeds and surface types on the ground and provide sloped resistance in the air. It also has gyro controls to control pitch and roll while flying, lightbar support to provide visual caution/warning cues, and the ability to customize the touchpad to handle a variety of tasks. By default, users can control an aircraft’s throttle by swiping across the touchpad. The built-in controller speaker also plays audio from air traffic control.

However, even before Neumann, there had been talk of a multiplatform strategy.

Source: WCCFTech, XDA Developers